When kids are learning to read, a good teacher gives them as many tools to use. Young readers are taught to sound out words they don’t know, words and concepts are repeated, and stories are put into a form that are familiar and warm. All of these help us even as adults along with one more critical tool – context, a bigger whole than the details that support it. Context comes from the pictures that support the text, either in a kids’ book or a magazine, but it also comes from the text itself. It also happens to be something that is fading from our culture altogether in strange and chilling ways.
Home » People & Culture (Page 153)
Category Archives: People & Culture
All about the standing-upright chimps that really love to talk about themselves.
Upon the Turf at Metrodome
I thought that it was time to write a Christmas Carol that honors our true savior – Brett Favre. The tune is “O Little Town of Bethlehem” for the Carol-Impaired.
New Deal
When I try to explain what I think is required for these hard times, I’ve deliberately steered clear of one important phrase: The New Deal. It’s a tough phrase for a lot of reasons, not just because it’s loaded with meanings that people inherited from their grandparents. The word “deal” does not mean “a new bargain”, the way we might use it today, but a new deal of the cards. The old hand had been played out, the way FDR saw it, and it was time for what he could only call a “new deal”. That strong frame for understanding what he was trying to accomplish is a bit lost – something I’ve started to regard as more of a problem than I first thought.
First Big Snow
A SEVERE WINTER STORM WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED ..
Have they ever issued a Humorous Winter Storm Warning? It’s always a very severe affair, never something lighthearted that we can all get into. You know, the kind of thing that goes down before the commercial break on the evening nooze, delivered by the guy with the soothing voice of pale male authority and the woman wearing hair with tunnels that neatly reveal her big earrings:
Afghanistan
I got into the cab slowly enough to size up the situation. One car in the family means that every once in a while I’m well and truly stranded, public transportation not being enough. I have to trust some other person to be a decent driver who will get me where I want to go safely and quickly. When I’m lucky, I can get a story out of it, too. The tall thin frame of a Somali man greeted me, as usual in cabs these days, and that was the situation. I needed a ride, he was making a living, and that was all there was to the deal. I told him where I needed to go and we were off.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 